I'd like to offer a sincere big thank you to Derek, our erstwhile news editor, for all his help and close attention to detail over the last few years.

He's conducted an impressive Big Dig through anything with even a faint whiff of Beefheart about it and brought us some really interesting and illuminating stories. Who could forget Derek's interview with Herb Bermann; a character so mysterious in the Beefheart universe that many have even posited he didn't exist. Derek tracked him down, interviewed him and delivered the results to you here at beefheart.com

I'm sure Derek will still pop up here occasionally in the future with a few scrupulously chased tid-bits of Beefheart trivia / import but in the main I'm going to resume news-editor duties due to competing claims on Derek's time.

Thanks Derek, you've kept thinks moving on here at beefheart.com so beautifully. I'm sure our regular and occasional readers will miss your contributions greatly and I'm very grateful for all of your efforts.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 12:15 PM  - 5 comments - post a comment

I've just got my copy of John French's beautiful massive tome and have been keenly devouring it in every spare moment. It's also had some favourable coverage in the UK press this morning.

Life Under Captain Beefheart's Regime appears in The Times and makes the book sound as fascinating and revelatory as it appears to be from what I've read so far.

If you spot any other interesting reviews or articles related the book please post links to them below.

Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic goes on sale tomorrow.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 11:51 AM  - 21 comments - post a comment

While we at The Radar Station are waiting to get our hands on a finished copy of John French's long-awaited book, Beefheart: Through The Eyes of Magic, published on January 11th, I have assembled some Beefheart-related news items and trivia which we didn't get round to mentioning in 2009.

Captain Beefheart's final album, Hoboism

Head of No. 6 Records Terry Tolkin recollected Captain Beefheart and Bob Krasnow in an interview with Warped Reality Magazine. Talking of gaps in the No.6 catalogue Tolkin said:

The last one was a Captain Beefheart EP called Hoboism, a fantastic track left over from the Bat Chain Puller sessions. I had become quite friendly with Don Van Vliet through my years at Rough Trade and then especially Elektra. Elektra's CEO was Bob Krasnow, the last of the great 1960's A&R guys to run a major label........I went out to Don's house in Eureka, California. Kras had produced Beefheart’s Safe As Milk LP and then signed him to WB. Things somehow turned acrimonious after that and they hadn't spoken in 15 years. I had persuaded Don to let me back up a mobile studio onto his front lawn and we were going to record a LP of old blues songs. I had flown out there to meet him face-to-face for the first time and kinda seal the deal. Well, instead of coming together over the next three days, it mostly fell apart. Don used his wife, Jan, to say that they didn't want Hoboism to be the last word on his career and that they couldn't find anyone they like to play on the blues album.

Bob Krasnow's memories of working with Captain Beefheart on Safe As Milk, can also be found at Warped Reality's interview with Terry Tolkin.

Don Van Vliet in Chelsea

Four small works by Don Van Vliet are showing at Zach Feuer Gallery in Chelsea until January 23rd. Part of a group exhibition entitled Jr. and Son’s, Don's creations hang next to the work of S. Clay Wilson and are pictured in situ here at the Zach Feuer Gallery website.

Zach Feuer Gallery, 530 W. 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel: +1 212 989 7700 info@zachfeuer.com www.zachfeuer.com
Exhibition dates: December 12, 2009 – January 23, 2010
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10-6

Blood-drenched rock stars run amok at the Vliet place

Captain Beefheart's celebrity gate-crashers bring gift of beetle bones

It would be hard to find two rock stars who are more fixated on Captain Beefheart than Alison Mosshart of The Kills and Jack White of The White Stripes.

Both groups have recorded Beefheart songs and continue to play them live. Jack White dressed up as Captain Beefheart on the photo shoot for Get Behind Me Satan and in interviews Alison Mosshart regularly expresses her yearnings to be with Don Van Vliet.

There’s one musician who’s alive but isn’t working anymore that I would do anything to do something with – and that would be Don Van Vliet from Captain Beefheart. And I think it would be surprising just because he doesn’t do music anymore (laughs). That’s my favorite band, you know… yeah, I’d like to just be in the same room as that man. - Alison Mosshart in Sunfiltered, July 2009

Alison Mosshart has even become the latest celebrity collector of paintings by Don Van Vliet, one of which is the showcase piece of her art collection, though Mosshart clarifies: I collect for the money. - Alison Mosshart in Black Book, June 2009

So when Alison and Jack got together this year to record a video to promote Dead Weather, their joint project, it was hardly surprising that they decided to visit Don Van Vliet's old stamping ground of Lancaster, California.

Having just pumped each other full of bullet holes, Dead Weather cohorts Jack White and Alison Mosshart decided to relax with a visit to the childhood home of their shared musical hero, Captain Beefheart.

"We were covered in blood," Mosshart says fondly of the July pilgrimage. "Fake blood from head to toe, with 70 bullet holes through us. You know, we were just totally gross. We showed up at his house and left a bunch of beetle shells — dead beetles we'd found in the desert — and some burned sticks under his tree. It just seemed appropriate!"

Mosshart says the family now living in the Lancaster, Calif., house had never heard of the eccentric musical genius who had spent years there listening to R&B singles with schoolmate Frank Zappa.

"A bunch of dudes with no shirts came out of the house, and they had no idea who he was. And because we were all covered in blood and we had the film crew with us, all these kids were coming out of their houses and were like, 'Is this an episode of Cops?'"


from: Death becomes them: Alison Mosshart and Jack White kill some time with the Dead Weather by Bill Forman in The Colorado Springs Independent, 13 August 2009


New Rockette Morton album

Described as incorporating Jazz, Swing, Blues, Rock and Country in a very unique instrumental collection from two very unique individuals, Bret Short and Rockette Morton, Short n Morton is available at cdbaby.













Gary Lucas


The high point of Gary Lucas' year for me was his collaboration with Najma Akhtar and their winning combination of rock, blues and raga on the album Rishte. You can listen to tracks and samples from Rishte at MySpace and World Village.

And Beefheart saved Craig & other writings

The 12-year old anti-hero of Josh Lieb's new book for young adults is a Captain Beefheart fan.

I point to my beloved Captain Beefheart, a musician so brilliant, so evil, he drove his own band insane. He would not let let them eat. He would not let them sleep. He would not let them leave his house. He made them wear dresses (and they were not girls). He stripped them of their very names and subjected them to hours and hours of abusive group therapy session. When a dejected and desperate member of the band managed to escape the Captain's clutches, Beefheart snatched him off the street and dragged him back to the practice studio. It was cruel. Assuredly. Inhumane. Undoubtedly. Evil. Disgustingly so. And yet I defy you, today, to listen to Trout Mask Replica and say it was not worth it.



I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be your Class President by 'Daily Show' Executive Producer Josh Lieb has its own webpage at Sheldrake Industries.


The Downbeat 75th Anniversary Anthology: The Great Jazz Interviews includes an interview with Don Van Vliet. The book is reviewed at All About Jazz.



John French's Limb Independence by W. C. Bamberger is an essay which appears at online music magazine Perfect Sound Forever.



And Beefheart saved Craig by Jefferson Hansen is a book with an eye-catching title. The author tells me that it concerns a couple of teenage boys who are Beefheart fans in the 70's. Amazon review here.


A familiar face in the cosmic matter?

The other day, I was grinding and polishing a stony meteorite (as one does), and after polishing, there, leering out from the polished surface, was the captains face. I know this sounds rather like those names of Allah found in aubergines and such, but I'll get a friend to photo this and send you the image in case you might want to put it on your site - it really is quite astonishing

The image is best viewed small on the screen, about 10 cm x 10 cm, otherwise the detail obscures the image. The meteorite is a piece of one called NWA869.

Thanks to George Wake for sending this in.


An assortment of musical homage

Skeletonbreath - the band at MySpace.

Invincible Czars perform Upon the My-O-My at YouTube.

Ty Segal performs Dropout Boogie at YouTube. Album review of Lemons at Pitchfork.

Snow Patrol include a reworked Observatory Crest in their Late Night Tales compilation. The version Snow Patrol have chosen is not the original Bluejeans and Moonbeams cut but the A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond version which is prefaced by Eric Drew Feldman's intro to Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee. Odd.

Bob Dylan's album Theme Time Radio Hour, Season 2 on Ace Records includes Ice Cream For Crow

Cracker give a guest shot on their album Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey to Patterson Hood from the Drive-by Truckers. On Friends Hood and David Lowery name check Captain Beefheart. See the video on YouTube here.

Now when you're on a date and you finally bring that girl home,
Put some Captain Beefheart on the stereo and you disconnect the phone
I'll show up drunk and raving, and then I'll pass out on the floor
Cause that's the kind of friend that you've got.


and finally........

According to The Guardian, The Jockey Club's chief executive, Simon Bazalgette was recently interviewed in the racecard at Cheltenham. Bazalgette said that his four ideal dinner guests would be "Richard Feynman, Vaseley (sic) Kandinsky, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Captain Beefheart."

Cal Schenkel is offering beautiful archival quality Giclée Prints of his acrylic on paper study of the Trout Mask Replica album cover artwork, 2009, hand-signed. 13x13in Personalized at no extra charge--specify inscription when ordering. See ralf.com

Old Skool Hooligans have a selection of Captain Beefheart t-shirts for sale.

Be quick if you want to see the video of Captain Beefheart's telephoned contribution to American Bandstand in June 1966 at YouTube. You can also read the story of Captain Beefheart's first TV broadcasts at Captain Beefheart Up Sifter

Impatient souls can whet their appetites for the revelations of John French's book at Proper Records website where there are twelve pages of extracts and photographs.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 12:11 PM  - 0 comments - post a comment

Due to be published on 11 January 2010 here is the first review of John's book Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic.

Posted by Steve at 1:07 PM  - 6 comments - post a comment

These photographs show The Magic Band playing at 'Ten Years of ATP', a music festival in Minehead, on Sunday 13th December. Click on the images to enlarge them.

In the annotated set list keen followers of The Magic Band will spot some interesting differences between this concert and previous appearances.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 7:50 PM  - 4 comments - post a comment

Grammy Award winning producer, engineer and mixer Greg Ladanyi died in a fall from a stage in Cyprus in September. He was 57. His first job as an engineer was with Captain Beefheart.

In 2005 Greg Ladanyi described working with Captain Beefheart on Bluejeans and Moonbeams.

It was the most bizarre, twisted experience for me. This was before I was an engineer and before I went to the Sound Factory. I was the business side of Stronghold Studios, and my partner, Al Thomas, owned the studio. I found the job, brought them in, and they paid us $5,000 for studio time. We spent the money in two days paying our bills. But there was a clash with Al and the producer, and they wanted their money back. There was no way, but we didn't say that. I just said [to producer Andy DiMartino], "I'll do this." I had this personality that was effective that way. So I was on the phone with Al every 20 minutes. "How do I patch this thing in?" I knew what things were and I had live mixing experience, but never in a studio. And it was weird because Beefheart was out of his mind. He was trippin', the band was trippin', and I was only 21 years old. We were there all night and they were doing this stuff that all sounded like spaghetti to me. But I loved the feeling of being in the studio. Oh, that was amazing. So I had a pretty big crash course in personalities, the studio, delivering, and that was when I got the job at the Sound Factory as a second engineer.

Interview with Greg Ladanyi at Sony Creative Software
Greg Ladanyi memoriam at Studio Expresso

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 7:24 PM  - 2 comments - post a comment

Posted by Steve at 3:08 PM  - 4 comments - post a comment

Posted by Steve at 7:32 PM  - 4 comments - post a comment

John French has confirmed that The Magic Band will perform at All Tomorrows Parties' Ten Years Of ATP Festival in December. In mails to us this week he has given some details of the line-up and the expected content of the set. John has also confirmed that more live shows are being planned and that several albums of live recordings from the 2005 tours will be released in various formats. This is what John wrote:

About 6 weeks ago, Barry Hogan unexpectedly sent me an email inviting The Magic Band to play at their tenth anniversary Festival.

I was very happy to accept on behalf of the group. We decided to stick with drummer Michael Traylor and to replace Gary, who was booked in Eastern Europe during this period, with one of the guitarists from my Drumbo band, Eric Klerks. Eric is a fantastic player, in his twenties. He employs metal finger picks and also plays slide. He spent a lot of time in New Orleans and came to Southern California to finish his music education at Cal Arts.

Eric seemed like a perfect fit to me for inclusion into the lineup, and he is a man well-acquainted with Beefheart music, so should do a fantastic job. I am VERY excited about this. Other dates are pending, but we wanted to get confirmation on this event first, which just happened.

I’m planning on playing sax to at least one composition: Hair Pie. Back in 2005, I bought a student sax, which I barely had a chance to play until probably a year later. I spent about a half-hour a day going through children’s music books and reading simple basic songs to re-acquaint myself with the fingering ( I used to play flute, so the fingering is similar) and then started improvising to my own music on “City of Refuge.”

I am approaching Hair Pie with two concepts: One is the instinctual — whereas I hear ideas that work and sort of “learn” them by playing along with the sections of the piece. The other is the analytical — where I actually analyze the chord structure and tone center so that rather than just blurring the entire piece in a frenzy of notes, I can switch gears with the song and compliment the music. I have listened to the first results and am excited, because it adds a completely new flavor to the music. Probably my biggest dream in life has been to play the soprano — right after being introduced to John Coltrane by Van Vliet. Jeff Cotton and I bought Don his first soprano — a King saxophone — from Wallich’s Music City ( long gone ) in Hollywood — with our studio fees from “Strictly Personal.” We went right down the street from Sunset Sound to Sunset and Vine to get drum sticks and strings. I saw the soprano sitting on a high shelf. It was used, and cost $180 as I recall. Jeff and I split the price and gave it to Don as a gift.

So, we will be updating and re-vamping our set list. Also, we are going to attempt “extending” a few pieces a bit — just to savor the delicacies that usually fly by so quickly.

Sundazed records last year put out a vinyl release of out takes from the Mirror Man Sessions. I suggested the Title “It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper” because I overheard Don suggesting that title to Bob Krasnow back while we were recording. Krasnow thought it was too long, as I recall, and so they settled for “Strictly Personal” with the same packaging concept. I was approached to write the liner notes for “Wrapper,” which was a nice, easy gig.

In 2005, I had taken along my new laptop and a couple of audio interfaces and recorded most of The Magic Band performances on about 15 tracks of digital recording using a program called “Digital Performer” by MOTU. We hired Chris Constable, a young musician who lives near me, to go over as “soundman” and “onsite recording engineer.” He was not only able to help the in-house engineer at the venues with cues, but monitored the recording. Some places do not allow releases of any recordings done without getting a fee ( these folks are known as tightwads!!!). Others simply did not have the facility to give direct lines of each channel. The tracks were made directly from the board ( or “desk” as it’s called in UK) into my audio interfaces. The hard drive sat around for four years gathering dust, and I finally, out of curiosity, decided to open up the files and see what the music sounded like. The first thing I listened to was Mirror Man, and I made a rough mix of the performance from Portsmouth ( which I recalled as being one of our best ) along with one or two others and sent them to Bob Irwin, of Sundazed. He sent me back an email saying “these sound SO good, let’s put them out.”

The deal we settled on was for me to mix three shows — my choice. Sundazed will release each show as a separate double-vinyl album, a CD, and mP3 downloads. They will all be available next February.

I worked hard on these mixes, as I’ve never actually mixed music before, but since Bob had said they “sounded great ” I plunged in with my usual fervor. With a lot of help from “Magic” Dave Roberts at MOTU, I was able to master the techniques needed. The company was very pleased with the mixes. I used a few “micro-surgery” techniques to clean up the mixes and avoid some of the “stage sound” coming through the vocal mic, which makes the tracks a lot cleaner. I had one instance where there was about 3 beats of music just missing — as though someone shut off the equipment and then turned it back on — so I just clipped a section out and put it back together at the next turnaround

To my ear, some of these mixes are probably the clearest “official” releases of the material: such as the Trout Mask Stuff. I am really excited to get this stuff heard, and it really was pleasant to re-visit these great compositions once again. Thanks to Sundazed, Beefheart enthusiasts will be able to enjoy concerts they may have attended, or perhaps wanted to attend and couldn’t. I am expecting that they will be pleased with the results. There may be the possibility of more being released if these do well.

Some tickets are still available for TEN YEARS OF ATP via the atp festival website.

Posted by derek@beefheart.com at 1:13 PM  - 14 comments - post a comment

Viper have released an expanded CD version of their vinyl best of live - Magneticism: the best of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Bands Live 72-81 - twenty tracks of magic.

Posted by Steve at 2:40 PM  - 7 comments - post a comment